


Longest Night

by hilaryfaye



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M, Multi, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 08:52:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5491181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hilaryfaye/pseuds/hilaryfaye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things that were not entirely of the world lived in the woods, of course he knew that, but he had never had reason to believe he had encountered such. Every animal, every stranger he had met in his winters alone had seemed perfectly mortal, perfectly earthly. </p>
<p>This, he could not account for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Longest Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PeopleCoveredInFish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeopleCoveredInFish/gifts), [skytramp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skytramp/gifts).



> Merry Christmas you godless heathens, enjoy your aesthetic sin.

The world grew quiet when it snowed. Like a blanket laid over the earth, everything softened, sounds stopped and hung in the air. One could follow tracks for miles, through the pale gloom of the woods.

Harasawa had spent seven winters alone like this. The solitude seeped into his bones the way the cold did, sharp at first, but gradually he grew numb to it—missed it, even, when the spring came and he returned to town. He couldn’t explain his motives for going away in the winter, only that when the first frost came the usual bustle of home became suffocating, almost too much to bear. The one thing that alleviated the crushing weight was leaving, taking what he needed and going out into the hills before the first snowfall.

He would pass the fields laying fallow, the grasses bent under the weight of the frosts, already beaten down by autumn rains. The temperatures would not yet be cold enough that the ground had frozen, but when the winds came out of the north it would be as if all the mud had turned to stone. The skies would be clear and the sun bright and cold, and he would shiver by the fire in his cabin and curse the wind.

Then would come the grey days, gloomy and still. On those days, it would snow, the soft fat flakes that soon piled high into drifts, smothering the color from the world. Then, buried in the quiet, Harasawa would truly feel alone.

He was comfortable being alone in those cold months. He might not speak from the time he left town until the time he returned, and it would take him a while to remember when to speak. His wife had been so disturbed by his silences that after three winters of this she had left, taken their children, and gone back to her family. She said everything else she could bear, but his silence unnerved her.

He had grown used to being alone, he could not say what was so different about his empty house in town that it drove him out every winter. He followed it like a compulsion, with all the reasoning of the goose flying south. He did not know why, only that he had to.

Many of the winters melted together in his memory, with only a handful of instances standing out. The bear that had passed so close to his door he could have reached out a hand to touch it. The elk with more points than he had ever seen. The valley he had nearly fallen to his death in while tracking the deer he had shot. The cold gray days seemed to exist outside of the world he knew in the spring.

He had expected this winter to pass much the same.

After the first snow, he began to see figures in the woods. Two men, he thought, but they never spoke to him, nor did he to them. They wore hoods so he could not see their faces—one was taller than the other—and always they seemed to be watching him.

He saw them once in the clearing by his cabin, but when he went out they were gone, and there were no footprints in the snow.

Unsettled, Harasawa kept close to the cabin that day, and for several days after that, until his food began to run low, and he was forced to go out in search of deer. He took his bow, and set out with two days food and water, and the tinder box wrapped in oilcloth.

He followed the streams that were not yet frozen over, where the deer would surely come to drink. Half a day’s walk from the cabin he stopped to crouch by the stream, and refill the water skin, which he would keep under his coat so that it would not freeze.

He heard a man’s laughter behind him. It echoed through the still air, an unmistakable sound.

Harasawa whirled in the snow, but saw no one. The water flowed dark over the rocks, and snow fell from the branches. No hooded men presented themselves to his sight, no travelers or hunters he might have recognized. Nothing at all.

The hair on the back of his neck prickled.

Things that were not entirely of the world lived in the woods, of course he knew that, but he had never had reason to believe he had encountered such. Every animal, every stranger he had met in his winters alone had seemed perfectly mortal, perfectly earthly.

This, he could not account for.

In the purple light of dusk he spied a buck through the trees. Harasawa softened his breath, kneeling in the snowy underbrush to draw back the bowstring, take aim. He was downwind, or his scent would have long startled the deer. The snap of the bowstring would startle it, and he would have to account for that. He knew he was not the best of hunters, but he had always gotten what he needed.

The buck lifted his head, and Harasawa loosed an arrow.

The buck startled to run, and the arrow struck its side, just shy of the heart. The buck crashed through the underbrush, and disappeared behind the slump of a hill. Harasawa cursed. If he was lucky it had pierced the lung, but he would be a long time tracking the buck. He would have to hope it did not snow in the night.

His breath burned in his lungs as he followed the tracks, and the dark trail of blood on snow. He followed it until the dark settled over forest, and he was forced to make camp under the hollow of an old cedar, wrapped in rough wool huddled close to the fire. A stillness ran through everything that made him uneasy. Even the owls had gone quiet. He imagined sometimes that he heard footsteps in the snow or voices whispering, but nothing came within reach of the firelight, and when he called out into the dark, he heard the sound no more.

Harasawa slept little that night.

Dawn came shivering and pale. Harasawa buried the ashes of his fire in snow, and began to track the buck once more. His bones ached and his head throbbed, but mercifully it had not snowed, and the tracks remained as clear as they had been the evening before.

Again, the stillness. The only sounds Harasawa heard were his own breath, and the slumping of snow as it slid from the boughs of trees to the forest floor. Even in the dead of winter, he should have been able to hear the birds.

A film of sweat clung to his skin under his shirt. He thought he should turn around, hurry back home—but he couldn’t waste the buck, not when the path was so clear. He focused on the tracks, trying to put the uncomfortable quiet out of his mind.

The sun climbed slowly, and near midmorning he came over the crest of a hill, and that was when he saw them.

The men he had seen near his cabin stood over the fallen buck, as if assessing it. The shorter of the two had pulled the arrow from its side, and was inspecting the fletching. The taller bent to touch the tip of an antler. It was unusual, Harasawa realized, for a buck not to have shed them this late in the season. Neither man spoke, but Harasawa had the sense of some kind of communication passing between them.

He felt a scratching at the back of his throat. Unable to smother the cough, Harasawa watched as the two men turned toward him. It seemed to him that the shorter one spoke to him. “Ah, so you are the hunter.” Their hoods were still pulled high, and Harasawa could distinguish nothing of their faces, but Harasawa could hear the hungry smile, like a wolf baring its teeth.

The taller man spoke, and there was no smile in his voice. “You’ve trespassed in our woods.”

Harasawa made his way down the slope, grasping the low boughs of cedar and pine. His voice, when it came to him, was already rough from disuse. “By what right do you call these woods yours?” He thought as he neared the men he might be able to see their faces, but it seemed as if a gloom filled their hoods, and he saw at most a smirk, a downturned mouth.

The shorter one chuckled at the question, as if he found it amusing. “Has the village already forgotten us? But I forget how long it has been, the winters are all the same.” Something about his voice caught Harasawa as familiar, though he couldn’t place it. “That you forgot us, though—that truly is hurtful, Harasawa.” He didn’t sound the slightest bit hurt. He still held the arrow in his hands, oddly clean of blood.

“Sorry,” Harasawa said, keeping his distance. “Should I know you?” When he was younger and stupider he might have challenged two strangers to a fight for his kill. He didn’t think he could win against these two. The taller was not much taller than Harasawa, but both sounded like young men.

The shorter one seemed to deliberate a moment, and pulled back his hood. Without a word the taller followed suit.

Harasawa stared at them. He did know them—Imayoshi and Susa, a pair of young men he’d hired on as farm hands the first few years he went away in the winter, before his wife had left. They helped with the planting and the harvest, and gathered firewood in the winter. Perhaps a year after his wife had left, they were simply gone, and Harasawa had not seen them since.

Imayoshi pressed the arrowhead against his cheek, studying Harasawa with a gleam in his eye. “It was a few years we tarried with you, Harasawa, and not so long ago.” Susa watched him with a stare that lacked any expression.

Harasawa swallowed past the lump in his throat. “Why are you out here?”

Imayoshi chuckled again, as if Harasawa had told a joke. “Susa, take care of the deer.”

Susa looked away from Harasawa and bent, laying the palm of his hand on the deer’s head. Harasawa watched as the buck’s cloudy eyes cleared and blinked, and the buck—which had very much been dead a moment before—struggled to its feet, and in a moment more was bounding off into the brush.

Harasawa stared after it, his throat gone dry. Susa looked back to him, a frown of disapproval creasing his face. “You were not meant to hunt here,” he said.

“Well, it’s all the same,” Imayoshi said. “Lucky it’s cold enough to stave off decay.” He examined the arrow, running a finger along the length of the shaft and over the fletching.  “It wasn’t a half bad shot, Harasawa.”

“It was an awful shot,” Harasawa replied. “But you’ve just let my dinner run off.”

Imayoshi smiled. “You can hunt elsewhere.” In what seemed like a single step he closed the distance between himself and Harasawa, pressing the arrow against his chest. Harasawa felt as if the breath had been knocked out of him. “But if we find you hunting in our forest again,” Imayoshi purred, “that house of yours will stay empty in the spring.”

The world had collapsed to the hand against Harasawa’s chest and the sly grey eyes holding his gaze. In a moment it was gone again, and Imayoshi was smiling at Susa. “Should we go, then?”

“We can’t be done with him already,” Susa replied, looking Harasawa up and down. His appraising gaze unsettled Harasawa in another way.

“Surely not,” Imayoshi said. “But need we do anything more with him today?”

“Perhaps not.” Susa reached for his hood, and in a moment his face was obscured once more. Imayoshi smiled and did the same.

Again the bared teeth. “We’ll see you again, Harasawa.” Imayoshi turned to Susa, and the pair moved to the hill. Harasawa watched their feet, but now tracks appeared in the snow, though he heard their footsteps.

He did not feel he could breathe again until the pair disappeared from sight, and the frigid air seemed to drive him to his knees. Harasawa’s head was spinning, trying to make sense of what he had seen.

There was blood on the snow where the deer had lain, but there it ended. Susa had simply laid a hand on it, and it had gotten up as if never injured. Harasawa clutched the arrow as if it might guide him to something that made sense.

He tried to think on the years he had known Imayoshi and Susa, when they shared a fireside and worked the same fields. He racked his brain for anything odd, anything that might have hinted that they were not what they seemed—but he found nothing. He had noticed nothing strange, those handful of years, nothing at all like what he had witnessed in the thin light of morning.

It was possible, he told himself, that whatever spirits had spoken to him were only wearing a familiar face and name. That the young men he had hired were only that, and not whatever haunted these woods.

He could not be sure, and he was not certain either belief was more comforting than the other.

_Can’t be done with him already?_ What did they mean to do with him? Or was it only to scare him?

Harasawa pulled himself to his feet, watching the direction they had gone in, as if they might appear before him once more. On impulse he climbed the hill, and scanned through the trees—but there was nothing, no one.

Still, he could feel their eyes on him. He drew back, slid the arrow over his shoulder into the quiver. He did not know where ‘their’ woods ended and the rest of the forest began, but Harasawa did not relax until he heard the birds singing.

He returned to the cabin with a doe small enough to carry across his shoulders. He was three days alone, working around the cabin, becoming accustomed once more to the silence. He watched for Imayoshi and Susa, but they never came. He thought over and over again about the encounter, watching the buck stand and leap as if it had never been harmed. Of course there were stories about such spirits, but he’d never given them credence. They were stories meant to keep people out of the woods, closer to home…

Harasawa could not shake the feeling that he had come up close against something that could have—should have—killed him.

#

Night’s hold on the world grew as midwinter neared, and Harasawa did not stray far from the safety of his cabin. He saw Imayoshi and Susa sometimes, lingering at the edge of the trees. He had the sense that he was just outside ‘their’ woods, that some invisible border kept them from coming too near. They rarely called out to him, those days when he saw them, but he heard them speaking to each other, their voices not loud enough for him to make out their conversations.

The times they came were irregular, with no pattern to them. Sometimes almost a week might pass before he saw them again. Sometimes he saw them two or three times in a day.

It was midwinter morn before he finally walked out to speak to them.

They fell silent when they saw him approaching. He saw Imayoshi’s smirk, and Susa’s quiet frown. They had been much the same when he knew them—if this was them. He stopped a few paces away, uncertain what it was he’d meant to say. He stared at both of them, and his mind went blank.

Imayoshi smiled at him. “Hello. You were ignoring us for quite a while, my feelings were almost hurt.”

Harasawa finally seemed to find his voice. “Is there some law that binds you to the forest?”

“A curious question, particularly without hellos.” Imayoshi looked to Susa. “What do you think? Should we answer?”

Susa’s gaze never wavered from Harasawa. “You mean to ask what we are.”

Harasawa hesitated, and nodded.

“Haven’t you guessed?”

Harasawa couldn’t detect any mockery in the question, at least not as he would have if Imayoshi had voiced it. He looked away, thinking of the buck. “I have a few ideas.” The stifling stillness that had pervaded the trees seemed to settle around him again, like something alive and watching. The sound of his own breath was too loud, too rough for that stillness. He wanted to retreat from that stillness—or perhaps to stop breathing. “It’s not important, I suppose,” he said, and it felt like surrendering something, though he didn’t know what. “Are you really the farmhands I hired all those years ago?”

“Has it been years?” Imayoshi smiled. “I lose track.”

“We’re the same,” Susa answered. “We were well disguised, then, so you never noticed anything odd.”

There was some relief in that assurance. “So you can travel freely?”

“Somewhat,” Imayoshi said. “If there is a place that gives us quarter.”

“And I gave you quarter.”

“And you gave us quarter.” Susa confirmed.

“But you left.”

Imayoshi shrugged, gave Harasawa that easy smile. “When the call comes we must fly. You understand that, don’t you?”

Harasawa held his tongue for a moment. He should be wary, he knew, saying too much to spirits. “Can I offer you quarter until spring?”  

Surprise lit Susa’s face, and Imayoshi only smiled. “You can,” Imayoshi purred.

Susa looked as if he meant to say something, but held his tongue, settling once more into that impassive expression Harasawa was so familiar with. He looked instead to Imayoshi, as if deferring some plan. “Of course,” Imayoshi said, “I’m curious about the reason for your generosity.”

Harasawa found himself at a loss. He couldn’t—or didn’t want to—articulate his reasons.

Imayoshi seemed to sense it. “I suppose that’s no more important than the exact nature of what we are. Wouldn’t you agree, Susa?”

Susa nodded, though Harasawa sensed he was answering an unspoken question more than the voiced one. “We’ll accept your invitation.”

Harasawa felt a kind of relief. He took half a step back toward the cabin, looking at them expectantly. There was no hesitation in their steps forward, crossing the boundary they had minded so carefully before. Harasawa let out a breath, and made his way back to the warmth of the fireside.

The cabin was a small one. It didn’t have to be big, when it only ever held him. One room, sealed tight against the wind, with a narrow bed and a chair and a hearth. It had been built by his father and his grandfather, long before his own birth. It was their hunting cabin then, and much of their family had used it for many years. His brother didn’t hunt, now, though his brother’s sons did—they had built their own cabin, in a different part of the woods.

Harasawa added wood to the fire as Susa and Imayoshi came in behind him, looking around. He noticed Imayoshi looking at the bed in particular, draped with a huge dark bearskin. Harasawa would have liked to say that he was the one who brought the bear down, but the truth was somewhat less in his favor.

He had taken a shot through the brush at what he had thought then was the side of an elk—until the bear he had just shot snarled and came crashing through the underbrush. A bow was not a weapon to take against a bear.

He had been lucky that his wife was with him that day. She was a hunter of some renown in her family’s home, those who knew her all quite disappointed when she’d married someone without an equal reputation. She was the one who buried a spear behind the bear’s shoulder, deep enough to run through the heart. She was the one who tanned the hide, and Harasawa reckoned that that their son and daughter both had been conceived on that bearskin.

It was, in the end, another thing she left behind. She had other skins, she had taken down other bears. This one that had almost killed her husband was not so important to her.

“If it has been years,” Imayoshi said, “I’m curious what happened to your farm, since we left.”

Harasawa stayed by the fire and made a show of warming his hands. “I sold most of it.” Without his wife, without his children, he couldn’t manage even that small plot of land by himself. He hadn’t the money to hire new farmhands. The land was given to him by his father after he had married, and the sting of being forced to sell it hadn’t faded.

When his father had divided up the land between his children, Harasawa had received the smallest plot. Not terribly unusual, for a youngest son, but even then it had been given reluctantly, and with a warning not to squander it. ( _As you have squandered so many other things_ was the unspoken part of his father’s warning.) Harasawa’s father had died several years before, and wherever his soul now resided, Harasawa could imagine the glower, the one that said, “Well, I couldn’t expect anything more from Katsunori.”

Harasawa supposed it was no surprise, then, that he’d cross paths with spirits. It was always those who lived alone in the stories, wasn’t it?

“I don’t know where you mean for us to sleep, Harasawa,” Imayoshi said. “There’s only the one bed. We won’t all fit.” There was an air of suggestion in his voice, but Harasawa knew that well, too. Everything Imayoshi said was laced through with _suggestion,_ and he knew how it made color rise in Harasawa’s face, despite his best efforts to appear unaffected.

Harasawa yanked the bearskin from the bed and shook it out before the fire, laying it on the floor. He turned away to go to the cedar chest where blankets were kept. When he turned back they had taken off their cloaks, hung them to dry. He had expected to see the same simple clothes they had worn when he knew them—coarse fabric, plain dyes—but that was not at all what they wore.

They looked like princes, in rich reds and greens, the cuffs of their sleeves and the hems of their shirts embroidered in gold and silver thread, in looping vines and knots without beginning or end. Harasawa couldn’t help but stare—he felt like a pauper in front of them. There was no reason, he supposed, that a spirit couldn’t appear as a prince.

That thought did nothing to slow his heart.

The reason for his ‘generosity’ had to be apparent to them, but they had accepted his invitation. It occurred to Harasawa that he had jumped into a river without knowing how deep it was, or how strong the current.

Susa noticed his stare, and came forward as if to take the blankets. He was not that much taller than Harasawa but he didn’t have to be—his presence was imposing enough on its own. He took the blankets and a shiver ran through Harasawa, fast followed by color in his cheeks. He was furious with himself, for acting like a blushing boy. He looked away from Susa, not knowing quite what to do with himself.

A hand closed on his arm.

Harasawa stilled—not fear, quite so much as anticipation. He stared forward, unseeing, aware only of the warmth of Susa’s hand through his sleeve, and Imayoshi’s soft chuckle. “Susa’s been so impatient this winter. Ever since you went hunting in our woods. And to think, a few winters ago he wouldn’t even admit that he liked you.”

Susa let out a breath. “Shut up, Imayoshi.”

Harasawa looked back at Susa, his breath shallow. Of course he had always known how good looking they were. When the pair of them had worked on his farm, there had been a regular stream of people coming by, to stand at the edges of the field and hope to be noticed. More than one person had remarked to Harasawa how their son or daughter always seemed to be out at _his_ fields instead of their own. Of course he knew.

He had done the best he could to keep it to himself that he was also entranced. He wondered now if it was because they were spirits.

He wondered if it even mattered.

Susa deposited the blankets haphazardly on the floor, his gaze never leaving Harasawa. Almost half-consciously the grip on his arm tightened, and half-consciously Harasawa leaned into it, turned his face just so, as naturally as breathing.

Perhaps he expected Susa to be cold to the touch—he and Imayoshi both seemed to have some tie to winter—but the feel of him was more like the welcome heat of a hearth fire after one has been out in the wind and the snow. Had Harasawa been in possession of his senses he might have had the grace to be embarrassed about how quickly he yielded, chin tilted up to a kiss that melted something in him, made him weak. He would have let Susa kill him and raise him up again, just to feel that sensation.

Susa released his arm, and brought the hand to the back of Harasawa’s neck, and if Harasawa’s breath had struggled before, it became little more than a pant then, a want that bordered on the obscene driving his pulse. He clung to the front of Susa’s tunic, the soft fabric twisted around his hands. He might have forgotten that Imayoshi was there at all, except for the chuckle.

“Bring him over before he falls to his knees,” Imayoshi said. “The floor is cold, and I’d guess there’s more than enough room on this bearskin. Carry on like that over there and I might get lonely.”

Susa pulled back to look over his shoulder, and Harasawa felt dizzy. He was half convinced he was caught in a fever dream, one he would be embarrassed to think of if he remembered it upon waking—but no, the hand on his throat was too real, the taste on his lips too distinct. Hell—how many times had he tried not to think of the taste of their mouths?

Susa looked back to him, and Harasawa felt almost as if he’d been knocked down. “Will you join us for tonight?”

Harasawa supposed the question was a courtesy but it sounded absurd to his ears. He was entirely at their mercy. He managed to get out a nod. He wasn’t sure if he still had a voice, let alone the words to say yes.

“It’s a shame you had to wait to have fun with us,” Imayoshi said from the fireside, where he was stretched out on the bearskin. “But we thought it would be rather inconsiderate to your wife.”

_She left before you did,_ Harasawa thought, but that didn’t matter now. His wife was long gone, happier without him, raising their children in her family’s home. What did she care what happened in a hunting cabin half-buried in snow?

Susa left him to join Imayoshi on the bearskin, and Harasawa stopped to hang up his cloak, noticing how his hands shook and willing them to still. He didn’t look, but he could feel their eyes on him as he bent to remove his boots, murmuring to each other. He didn’t understand their interest.

He didn’t need to.

Harasawa stepped toward them and Imayoshi caught him by the wrist, pulling him down. The fur of the bearskin rubbed against the palms of his hands, and Imayoshi leaned across him, pressing his mouth first to his collar, and creeping up his throat with kisses slow as honey. If Susa was a hearth fire, Imayoshi was the chill winter wind, drawing shivers out of him, making Harasawa’s skin prickle and his chest ache.

Imayoshi’s teeth scraped over his throat, followed by the flat sweep of his tongue. Susa’s hands dragged the hem of his tunic up, over his head, displacing Imayoshi for only a moment. Susa’s fingertips found scars as if they’d always known where they were, seeking them out in advance of the mouth that kissed them. Harasawa couldn’t remember where most of the scars came from, anymore, but with Susa’s careful attention to each of them he was lucky he could remember his own name.

Imayoshi moved up to claim his mouth, taking a fistful of Harasawa’s hair to hold his head where he wanted it. Harasawa’s breath hitched in his throat, and he could swear he felt Imayoshi smirk against his lips. Imayoshi pulled back to smile at Susa. “Didn’t I tell you? Even more eager than you.”

Susa rose from his attentions to a scar almost at Harasawa’s hip, a dark scowl on his face. Harasawa half expected him to give some sharp rebuke, but all he did was reach across to Imayoshi, pulling him in for a hungry kiss. Absurd as it was, Harasawa felt as if he were intruding on something, that he should look away—but before he could they broke apart again, Imayoshi’s grin only widening.

Imayoshi let go of Harasawa’s hair to pull his tunic over his head and throw it aside, his trousers quickly following. He was lean of frame, unmarred by scars, fine black hair trailing from his navel. As he stood Harasawa leaned in, clasping his hands at Imayoshi’s waist, kissing his way down the length of Imayoshi’s torso. Hands trailed down his back, through his hair.

He swallowed Imayoshi down, bent at an uncomfortable angle to take Imayoshi’s cock as far as he could. He was rewarded with Imayoshi grasping his hair again, giving an almost painful tug. He stroked his hands down Imayoshi’s thighs, and sucked with a greed he hadn’t felt in a long time. He wasn’t so lost in his haze of _need_ that he didn’t feel humiliated at how readily he went to his knees, how _badly_ he needed Imayoshi’s cock in his mouth. Imayoshi pulled him off before too long and he hated himself for how disappointed he felt.

Imayoshi nudged Harasawa out of the way to help Susa out of his own clothes, murmuring in appreciation at a sight he must have already known well. Harasawa envied him that familiarity. Susa was broad and strongly built and everything that made Harasawa’s mouth go dry.

Imayoshi’s tongue ran in an arc up Harasawa’s throat. “I’d be offended,” he murmured in Harasawa’s ear, “at how much more awed you look at Susa if I didn’t share your appreciation.”

Harasawa didn’t have the voice to reply with.

“Perhaps,” Imayoshi said, fingers wrapped around Harasawa’s throat, “Susa won’t mind if I have a little fun with you first.” He pulled back, splaying his hand over Susa’s chest. “Would you do the honors?”

Susa gave him a caustic look but obliged, pulling Imayoshi not so gently into his lap, with Imayoshi’s back against his chest. Imayoshi grinned at Harasawa, beckoning him closer. He leaned forward, knees on either side of Susa’s lap, and wrapped his arms around Harasawa’s neck. The angle left Harasawa with a clear view of Susa, slicking his fingers in a clear oil, preparing Imayoshi. Imayoshi’s breath warmed Harasawa’s throat and chest, his hair rubbing against Harasawa’s cheek. His teeth scraped over Harasawa’s shoulder, testing for a reaction. He bit, and Harasawa gasped,

Deciding he was ready, Imayoshi pulled himself out Susa’s lap, pushing Harasawa back on the bearskin. Imayoshi wasted little time in helping Harasawa out of his trousers, and straddling his hips. He stroked Harasawa’s cock, waiting for some indication of assent. He managed to nod, and Imayoshi sank down with a sigh. He dragged Harasawa up by the back of his neck, dragging teeth and tongue over his throat. Harasawa gripped a hand under Imayoshi’s ass, pressing his face into Imayoshi’s hair, breathing the scent of pine, of wolf’s hair.

Imayoshi made hardly a sound, except for his breathing, anchoring his hands on Harasawa’s shoulders, his arms, his mouth hardly leaving Harasawa’s skin for a moment. For himself, Harasawa was conscious of the sounds escaping his lips, all the more humiliating for Imayoshi’s silence.

Imayoshi paused to bring Harasawa’s free hand to his cock, returning his attention to Harasawa’s throat. Harasawa focused on those teeth, focused on bringing Imayoshi to the finish, and it’s only that that kept him from coming too as Imayoshi sighed against him, and smiled.

Imayoshi put soft kisses over each of the places he’d bitten, sliding away and leaving Harasawa coiled tight as wire, his whole body aching. He was slick with sweat, his breath shallow and his heart thundering against his ribs. Susa was sat back a bit, cast in firelight, gazing at Harasawa as if deciding what to do with him. Harasawa stared back, almost hoping he might communicate what he wanted through look alone.

Susa finally broke his silence, his voice softer than Harasawa expected. “I have been waiting,” he murmured, his fingers around Harasawa’s chin, “to see you like this.”

Harasawa’s voice was strange to his own ears. “You could have had it whenever you asked.”

Susa smiled a little, his hand moving down Harasawa’s throat. “I’ll ask, then.” He leaned in, following the path of reddened bite marks up Harasawa’s neck with soft, mouthing kisses that made him shiver. With his lips at Harasawa’s ear he murmured, “Will you get on your back?”

Harasawa stretched out on the bearskin, every inch of him sharply aware of every sensation: the hide against his back, the warmth of the fire, the touch of Susa’s hands. Laid out like that, Harasawa was too aware of himself—of the scars and bruises and the signs of age, all the ways in which he was no longer a young man. He was embarrassed by the intentness of Susa’s gaze, and turned his face away.

“Look at me.”

Harasawa gave a shuddering breath, the ache in him becoming more focused. He looked up at Susa, knowing how needy he looked. “Please…”

Susa had the oil he’d used for Imayoshi, and he pulled Harasawa to him by his hips. Harasawa kept his breath as steady as he could while Susa spread him open, more patiently than Harasawa could have imagined. He went until Harasawa started to squirm impatiently, and looked at him expectantly. Harasawa realized Susa was waiting for him to beg. _“Please.”_

“Please what?”

Half a dozen obscenities ran through Harasawa’s head before he was able to say the words. _“Fuck_ me.”

Susa smiled, shifting to oblige. Harasawa tried to smother the sound he made, a hand pressed over his mouth. Susa took him by the wrist and pulled his hand away so he could kiss Harasawa, setting a torturously slow pace with Harasawa pinned under him. Harasawa couldn’t keep quiet any longer, swearing through gasped breaths and moans. He clutched at Susa’s shoulders as if that alone would anchor him to something real.

“I—I’m—”

Susa slowed, pulled away, and Harasawa hated the whine that came from his throat. He tried to twist under Susa and was stilled by Susa’s weight pressing down on top of him, so that Susa could kiss him at his leisure. Harasawa trembled, begging again, babbling what was probably nonsense but he didn’t care he wanted, _needed_ to have Susa inside him again.

Susa pulled him up, turned him over on his hands and knees so that Harasawa could see Imayoshi stretched out in front of him, still naked, watching as if it were all very amusing. Harasawa was past caring. Susa pushed into him again and he groaned, pushing back against Susa. When he tried to touch himself Susa pulled his hand away, kissing the back of Harasawa’s shoulders and picking up the pace.

Harasawa was shaking and it was all he could to keep himself up, digging his hands into the bearskin. He felt almost feverish, his skin flushed and the heat smothering him. Susa pressed a kiss between his shoulder blades and stroked Harasawa’s cock, and Harasawa came shuddering, only failing to collapse entirely because Susa held his hips, taking a handful more erratic thrusts before Harasawa heard a quiet groan and was allowed to slide to his belly, exhausted desperately trying to catch his breath.

Imayoshi moved across the bearskin, kissing Susa. They murmured to each other, and that was the last thing Harasawa remembered before he fell asleep.

He dreamed about wolves in the dark woods, snow piling up on cedar boughs, and teeth at his throat.

#

Harasawa woke in bed, groggy and with a familiar slowness settled in his limbs. Susa and Imayoshi were already awake, dressed now, in their rich clothes. Harasawa was almost surprised to see them still there.

He remembered as he stretched and stirred—they’d accepted his invitation to stay until spring. Until the snows melted and the trees began to bud, they’d be with him. They noticed he’d woken and Imayoshi looked over with a smile. “It’s a bit chilly, don’t you think? Maybe we should all warm up.”

Susa gave him a withering look. “That’s the best you have?”

Harasawa smiled a little, reaching for his clothes. “There are things I have to do.”

“Ah, well, I suppose it will have to wait.” Imayoshi shrugged, apparently content.

The snow-blanketed forest, when Harasawa opened the door and stepped out into the snow, did not seem so grim as it had before. His breath steamed on the air, and he paused as the sunlight peered through the trees in a rare break in the clouds. Fox tracks skirted the snow around the cabin, and disappeared once more into the snow. _Until spring,_ he thought.

The days seemed more distinct in his memory, when he thought back on them. They no longer melted together as in a spring thaw. They talked a great deal, more so than he could recall in particulars. Susa told him a great deal about the places they had traveled, and Imayoshi about the people they had met. Sometimes he heard one of them whistling a tune that seemed like it ought to have been familiar, but he couldn’t place it, until he noticed himself humming the same strains.

One evening as they lay on the bearskin, a tangle of limbs, with Imayoshi’s head laid against his chest, Harasawa managed to voice the question he’d kept close. “Where will you go, when spring comes?”

Imayoshi hummed thoughtfully, his palm pressed against Harasawa’s to see how their fingers aligned. “Wherever we end up, I suppose. We never give much planning to it, do we, Susa?”

Susa made a sound of agreement, from where he lay with his head in Imayoshi’s lap. “There’s no point to it. We never get the chance to stop until winter.”

“I don’t understand it,” Harasawa said.

“You don’t have to.” Susa sat up, looping his arms around his knees. “But you want to ask if we’re going to come back.”

Harasawa let out a breath. “Yes.”

“Perhaps. Someday. But we can’t tell you when. It might be three years from now. It might be thirty.”

“I told you,” Imayoshi murmured, “we lose track.”

“What are you, really?”

“Do you really care, Harasawa?”

“I suppose not.” He laced his fingers through Imayoshi’s. “I’ll have to go home in the spring.”

Imayoshi laughed softly. “Will you, though?” He traced the back of Harasawa’s hand. “What’s tying you to that house, really? Your father dead, your wife and children gone, not even the farmland to hold on to.”

“Where else would I go?”

“Anywhere.” Susa reached out, laying his hand over the top of Harasawa’s. “Wherever we end up.”

For a moment, the only sound was the snapping of the fire. Harasawa looked at Susa, not sure he understood. “You mean I should just vanish with you, as if I were a spirit, too.”

“You’re halfway there,” Imayoshi said. “Or hadn’t you wondered why you flee the village every winter?”

Harasawa’s hand was still clasped between the two of theirs.

#

Spring came slow, the first buds peeking through the last of the snow. Snowmelt sang through the streams, and the air took on a different, muddier smell.

Harasawa carried his bow over one shoulder, the mud sucking at his boots as he walked, humming one of the strange tunes that seemed not quite familiar. The sky was a brilliant blue, with only whispers of white clouds. The air had not yet warmed, but the fields were turning green with the first sproutings, which soon enough would be tilled under to make way for the planting.

At his side, Susa whistled at the birds that called from the trees, and swept down on the fields for their food. Imayoshi pointed out the foxes that kept their distance, still suspicious of Harasawa. “Soon enough, they won’t pay you any mind.”

“I suppose that’ll be it, then?”

Imayoshi shrugged. “I suppose it would.”

Harasawa knew springs like this. The world sang when the snow melted. Color bled back into sight, and everything hummed awake, as if coming out of slumber. The ground thawed, and the only tracks were those left in the mud, which soon enough would be washed away in the rains, leaving no sign of the travelers that had passed there.


End file.
